My discovery of the Philadelphia Vireo seemed to mark the tail
end of a good pulse of eastern vagrants through the county, although most of
these were frequent ones like Tennessee or Blackpoll Warblers. Other than
enjoying the continuing flow of Cassin’s Finches, Clark Nutcrackers and Pinyon
Jays from the montane bird invasion, the next few days brought little of
interest, although I did twitch a Chestnut-sided Warbler – an annual vagrant to
the county - at the Hollister Tech Park on Sep 27.
Things started to look up that evening when a return check
of the Tech Park turned up a nice male American Redstart – most birds we see
are in female or immature plumage. As a change from vagrants from the east, the
next morning Sophie Cameron and I found our first Tropical Kingbird of the fall
during a survey at Laguna Blanca. This Mexican species is a frequent vagrant
during the fall as birds reverse migrate north up the Pacific Coast and
typically several birds spend the winter.
Noting that on September 29, the NW winds finally dropped off and a light easterly flow developed along the south coast, I had arranged a visit out to Point Conception, where I was joined by Peter Scheekloth. This was something of a ‘play it by ear’ visit as we were not sure whether we would seawatch or focus on landbird migrants. I was hoping there might be a concentration of Black-vented Shearwaters close-in that I could check for a Manx. Once we arrived at the parking lot above the lighthouse, a few minutes of scanning revealed a complete lack of shearwaters, so we started to check out spots for passerine migrants. The first couple of cypress patches proved largely birdless, so we headed down to a small drainage that a decent growth of willows and some sections of flowing water.
After picking up a couple of common migrants, I heard an Empidonax flycatcher ‘whitting’ away. Although our initial efforts to get a visual failed, Peter eventually found the bird flycatching out in a weedy field on the far side of the drainage and we were able to get excellent looks and photos – very helpful when dealing with this difficult-to-identify group. The regular empid in fall migration in the county with a ‘whit’ note is Willow Flycatcher. However, this bird had a small bill, a distinct eye-ring, a white throat, grayish-olive rather than brownish upperparts and really black wings with strongly contrasting white wingbars and tertial edges. It was a classic Least Flycatcher, which is a pretty good quality vagrant on the mainland of the county, with perhaps just one found every four years. I have had a little more luck with them out on Santa Barbara (especially) and Santa Cruz Islands.
Heading on towards the ranch house area, we followed up on a
calling Yellow Warbler and found a couple of flowering bushes were attracting a
few warblers and two orioles – a dull female Bullocks and bright Baltimore
Oriole. The latter is fairly infrequent during fall migrant, but almost annual
wintering on the south coast. After these two good birds, we headed over to
check a weedy field that is good for sparrows most years. We almost immediately
found a rather dingy plumaged aimophila sparrow that had us considering
Cassin’s, which would have been a mega-vagrant. However, after getting better
looks, it became clear it was just a young, poorly marked Rufous-crowned
Sparrow.
The next day, I was back at the Tech Park and found two
different Chestnut-sided Warblers in close proximity to each other. Although
this species is one of the most regular eastern warbler vagrants, it appears
this is the first time that two have been present together at the same
location.
A couple of days later, on another visit to the Tech Park, I
found a Blackpoll Warbler, which initially gave excellent views as it foraged
below eye-level for a few minutes. One of my goals is to always find at least
one Blackpoll Warbler each fall, but the species, while still frequent, has
declined significantly since my arrival in California in the early 1990s, and
my streak was broken about three years ago. A nice bonus when I returned home
was a vocalizing Tropical Kingbird on the power lines behind my backyard.
Vagrants from the south or east are easy enough to find, but finding one from the west (e.g. Asia) is much harder, as only Ruff and Red-throated Pipits show up with any regularity, and it has been over a decade since the last big Red-throated Pipit year. Sunday, October 4, saw me head up to the north coast. I began by checking some agricultural fields for Bobolinks and eventually found two which showed so well that even I managed a couple of half-decent photos. While looking for the Bobolinks, I got a call from Dave Compton, the county recorder, that a Dusky Warbler, an east Asian phylloscopus warbler, had been found in Goleta. Since I had seen this species almost two decades prior in the county, I told him that I was going to stick with my plan to do my bird survey work and then head further north to the Santa Maria River estuary.
However, when I drove up to the wind farm, I discovered I
had left all my datasheets at home, which rendered it impractical to my work.
At that point, I decided just to head back to Goleta and look for the warbler.
There was a small crowd of birders when I arrived, and the bird was being seen
intermittently low-down in a row of tamarisks. Figuring the bird might prefer
feeding on the sunny side of the row, I crossed over and quickly had several
good close-range views of four to five seconds each.
Monday saw me back at Laguna Blanca, where I was joined by
Sophie Cameron. We were happy to finally see some mud appearing and hopefully
next week will see a few more shorebirds present. We had to make do with a few
White-headed Ibis and Wilson’s Snipe. The lake has good habitat for Least
Bitterns, but I had not heard any there during my visits there this year.
Sophie had almost certainly heard one call a couple of weeks previously, but we
were unable to get any response to playback.
Shortly after starting our survey, we both heard a Least
Bittern call. This time, we were determined to try playback for a longer period
and patiently wait. For a few minutes, nothing happened but I then picked up a
female Least Bittern moving stealthily through the edge of the tules about 50 m
away. We were occasionally able to track her progress by seeing movements in
the tules stems and eventually she popped up right in front of us. Shortly
afterwards a male arrived and showed even better. It was striking that neither
bird called at all, although we did hear a call from a third bird about 100m
away.
Least Bittern is a species I rarely saw for my first 3 decades in the USA. They can be easy in places like Anahuac in Texas, but they are often elusive at locations where they are present. I saw one when I first moved to Santa Barbara in 2000, but then went 17 years before my next one, as it seems the species ceased to occur in the county during the long drought starting in 2011. These birds were the fifth time I have seen the species in county and my best views ever. Even now, I have seen this species less than ten times in my life.
The photos in this post were generously provided by Sophie
Cameron, Hugh Ranson and Peter Schneekloth.
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